[ExI] ai class at stanford

[spike]

-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of G. Livick
Sent: Saturday, August 27, 2011 10:05 PM
To: ExI chat list
Subject: Re: [ExI] ai class at stanford

>...I've followed this thread for a bit, but can't for the life of me see
how the AI class, the offering of LISP as a preferred means for creating AI
software, and the use of spreadsheets in lieu of hard coding, all fit
together...  We won't be developing AI, just learning some of the basic
probability theory and numerical methods in the current tool-set; extremely
dull stuff for anyone mainly interested in the Great Oz, and not the man
behind the curtain.  FutureMan


Sure, FutureMan, but the big fiery guy was really a lot more interesting
than the goof behind the curtain.  He really had the old SILENCE!  thing
going.  And the whole bursting into flame bit, don't we wish we could do
that?  It would be great at annual performance review time.

Your commentary is exactly the kind of feedback I have been looking for, and
why I suggested we keep all the Stanford AI discussion under strict subject
line discipline, so those who don't want to follow all that can effectively
filter it all without filtering any particular poster.   We can do subject
line filtering instead of poster filtering.

Granted the whole notion of weak AI, teaching cars to drive themselves and
doing however it is that Google figures out what we want from a few words,
may have exactly nothing to do with AGI and may offer nothing at all to help
us in understanding AGI.  But I see it as a worthwhile exercise in that it
may help us understand a little better how our own brains work.  I brought
up the example of the WW2 fighter games, and how the software opponents seem
to make reasonable and humanlike decisions on what to do in any particular
case.  I concluded way they did that is to make an enormous look-up table
from watching humans play, which is not intelligence.  But if we look at
online chatter in general, it is easy to conclude that human activity is
largely the bio equivalent of an enormous lookup table.

spike